Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning
A number of comments, some posted here at The BRAD BLOG, others in media accounts, suggest that President Obama’s willingness to abandon the “public option” was either a caving-in to “formidable opposition” or, as Howard Fineman speculated on MSNBC’s Countdown, merely the case of the President’s use of the “public option” as a “bargaining chip” which he played “way too early.” T.J. Caswell described it as “throwing in the towel.”
Other assessments have been less charitable. In a powerful video, journalist John Pilger argues that President Obama is nothing more than “a marketing creation”; that the American electorate was duped into believing the junior senator from Illinois was on the side of common men and women. Pilger portrays the President as a sort of Manchurian candidate for Wall Street, the corporate security state and Empire.
While perhaps not quite as harsh as Pilger’s, Ralph Nader’s assessment is just as devastating:
You can see this emerging over the last few months. President Obama has met with the heads of the drug companies and the health insurance companies. Some executives have met with President Obama four to five times in the White House in the last few months. He has never met with the longtime leaders of the “Full Medicare for Everybody†movement…
Not much of a dialogue over health care when those representing a reform — single-payer — favored by 60% of the American electorate can’t even get an audience with the President…
The people who voted for Obama, and that was a decisive majority, were not looking for capitulation to the Bush agenda. They were certainly not seeking bi-partisanship at any price. To the contrary, people expected Obama’s deeds to match his soaring campaign rhetoric. But what we’ve received, so far, is the very thing Obama pinned on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — “more of the same.”
The “formidable opposition” argument ignores the true power of the Presidency as a bully pulpit.
Nader spelled out what Obama could have done if he truly desired to do what was right.
Had Obama chosen to use the bully pulpit to advance what 60% of the American electorate already supported — single-payer — had he taken the opportunity to expose the true “opposition” to be but a few greedy insurance carrier CEOs and their Wall Street investors; had he painted the full and honest picture of the corrupt, dysfunctional, and deadly multi-payer system as one that places profits over the health and very lives of our people, the “formidable opposition” would have disbursed, searching for a good place to hide.
The fundamental mistake so many have made is to assume that Obama actually desired what is best for the American people. If that were the case, he would have pressed for what he favored when he was an Illinois state senator — single-payer, which, even now, Obama concedes is the only system that would provide full coverage for every American.
In deciding to run for President, the highly articulate Barack Obama realized that, by advancing single-payer during the campaign, he would have shut the door to the massive corporate campaign contributions, which have become a vital component for coverage by the corporate-owned, mainstream media.
As I pointed out in “Single-Payer and the ‘Democracy Deficit,'” candidates who do not play the corporate contribution game, amassing millions of dollars to spend on 30-second, deceptive spot TV ads, are marginalized by the corporate media. As part of a self-fulfilling prophesy, the corporate media justify non-coverage, claiming the candidate is “not viable.” In truth, it is the failure of the corporate media to cover the substantive issues candidates like Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) represent that renders them not viable.
Case in point: the August 2007 “blind-poll” Internet survey which set forth the policy positions of Democratic candidates for President but did not include their names. Obama, the charismatic “change†candidate whose soaring rhetoric is second to none, received a meager 3%; Clinton, 3.6%. Kucinich was the choice of “a phenomenal 53%.â€
Kucinich’s position on health care reform was straightforward. He was and is a co-sponsor of H.R. 676 — single-payer “Medicare for All.” Candidate Obama, by contrast, chose to play it fast and loose with a vague “universal coverage” plan that could involve an undefined “public option” — an option which, Nader and Pilger forcefully argue, Obama was prepared to abandon from day one.
As I noted in my most recent article, “the effort to satisfy both corporate greed and the health care needs of our people is a fool’s errand.” Such an effort, even if sincere, is destined to fail.
Pilger’s astute analysis, the access and back-room deals given to both the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and the exclusion of single-payer advocates suggest that the effort was never sincere.
UPDATE 08/18/09: I just received an e-mail from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH):
Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT?…
The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new “customers” to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.
You will next hear talk about “co-ops.” The truth is that insurance company campaign contributions have co-opted the public interest.
I need your help to spread the word and rally the nation around true health care reform which covers everyone and maintains fiscal integrity without breaking our nation’s bank!
Those who wish to contribute to that effort can link right here.
UPDATE 08/19/09: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will appear today on MSNBC’s The Ed Show with Ed Schultz at 6:30 p.m. EDT to discuss the status of the health care reform proposals.
UPDATE 08/19/09: While not directly pertaining to health care, the newly posted “Barack Obama: Change We can Deceive In” by Lori Price, the Managing Editor of Citizens For Legitimate Government is worthy of note.
She contends Obama has out-Bushed Bush, including, amongst many examples:
War funding we can believe in: Obama seeks $205 billion for Iraq, Afghan wars
Occupations we can believe in: 50,000 US troops to remain in Iraq under Obama ‘withdrawal’ plan
Bagram black hole we can believe in: Obama denies terror suspects right to trial
Extraordinary rendition we can believe in: Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Lawsuit
State secrets we can believe in: Obama Administration Backs Bush Secrecy Policy in Terror Case
Mercenaries we can believe in: KBR Awarded Convoy Support Center Contract by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Torture architects we can believe in: Obama lawyers set to defend Yoo
Eavesdropping we can believe in: Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case.
I’m sure readers could come up with many more examples, such as continued retention of the murderous Blackwater fanatics.
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Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Clean slate, eh?
Watch Rep Weiner blow Scarborough away with truth.
All the wingnut talking points turn to dust.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmlDZXCrWRE Pt 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIF_dWwxAHE Pt 2
Obama may have sold his soul to the Devil and may be a full on traitor when it comes to the public option. However, it’s not up to him. It’s up to congress. If congress passes a bill with a STRONG public option, which they need to do, then I’d like to see Obama attempt to veto it. His true colors would come shining through for all to see.
A bait and switch tactic, all in order to pull attention away from the truth about the health insurance industry’s real function and the scads of health care dollars wasted in managing, promoting and marketing the low grade paper pushing product of their service, topped off with unconscionably generous profits to boot? Diabolical if true, perhaps Faustian or even Cheneyesque in character, when considered in context to the secret backroom deals and lack of explanation by Obama, surrounding the details of their genesis and implementation. Or worse still; this is how how government operates.
Thanks for the excellent links, Floridiot.
Weiner’s appearance provided one of the few occasions in which single-payer received any airing whatsoever on the MSM. (Perhaps the best MSM coverage of single-payer occurs when Rachel Maddow has Bernie Sanders on.
Scarborough did not have a clue. He couldn’t answer Weiner’s often repeated question — what do health insurance carriers bring to the table?
The reason he couldn’t answer is simple. They bring nothing of value. They’re parasites. But like successful parasites in nature, health insurance carrier’s convince their host that their presence is actually needed.
Weiner’s remark that the health of our citizens is not a commodity sailed right over Scarborough’s thick skull. All he could do was repeat the ideological mantra about “free enterprise.”
If I’d been in Weiner’s shoes, I would have driven the point home — the current system is not merely corrupt and dysfunctional, it’s deadly! 18,000 of our citizens die every year simply because they can’t afford coverage — countless more when carriers deny necessary procedures. Nader provides an overall estimate of 20,000 Americans dying annually so that a few CEOs and their Wall Street investors accumulate more wealth.
I would have asked Joe, “How can you defend a system that kills nearly seven times as many people per year as died on 9/11 in the name of free enterprise?”
Good job, Ernie. Good job, Dennis. Good job, Flo.
I just took a peek over at groupthink, and it looks as though the invertebrates are backpedalling again, or trying to sound like it. Now, if we could just sit on them until we get our single payer….
I haven’t been following the health care issue very well. But I have a question related to the cost.
For at least the past 100 years, productivity and efficiency have been increasing. (I assume this is true and not in question)
So can someone please tell me, if that’s the case then why do the “prices” of goods, like consumer goods and capital goods
(and yes I believe health care is a good that is produced)
why do their prices keep going up rather than down?
One would assume increases in productivity and efficiency would cause the price of goods to decrease thereby increasing the standard of living for people. And don’t tell me it’s some mythical force called inflation which economists describe as the increase in prices. That doesn’t explain the paradox.
No one who I asked has been able to answer the question.
Also can someone provide a link to a good explanation of how “single payer” is supposed to work and maybe also explains the other details of health payment reforms.
WTF??? Is America about nothing but money? What the hell happened to morality? To think that people with money are entitled to the best medical care there is, and that those without money are entitled to die of neglect is beyond inhuman. Shame on Abomina, shame on all Americans who take this lying down! That the richest country in the world (at least in terms of material wealth) can sink this low defies belief! It’s time to take to the streets with pitchforks, time to boil the tar and pluck the feathers. Abomina is nothing but the same old excrement wrapped in a million-dollar smile. He’s probably negotiating with Siemens right now for mobile crematoria for dealing with all the inconvenient poor people who will succumb to the tunes of his hypnotic bullshit. America: Save it or screw it!!!
You know how it is here Czar, it has to be a catastrophe before anyone wakes up.
If they would just keep showing those third world medical clinics going on around the country. (which I think is the administrations doing in part)
Hell of a piece of propaganda, it does good at the same time as getting the message out, a definite win-win, but notice how very little the MSM is showing this…or maybe they are, I never watch.
It really stinks, Flo. I live in a little country, smaller than Maine, with only ten million people, and yet everyone’s health is taken care of, cradle to grave, and taken care of well. It costs me about 70 bucks a month, and, yes, the state picks up the slack, because the people here think it’s important to take care of everyone’s health. True, the Czechs have been sucked in by the NATO snake oil and have squandered great wealth on useless hi-tech jet fighters and such, and the politicians are corrupt and live like kings, but they pose no threat to world peace or the survival of humanity. America has truly become the Evil Empire – We have met the enemy, and we are it. “If I had a rocket launcher…”
In the same blog here, the post “Free Speech Is Not Free”, the same people framing this debate on TV only letting the 15% against health care on TV, are the same ones that dominate all the airwaves due to consolidation and having the $$$ to buy up all the airwaves…and then these same people cry “TOTALITARIANISM” when you bring up the Fairness Doctrine!
This is so they can CONTINUE what they’re doing: misinforming the American public like Tokyo Rose!!!
But they are the first to bring up the propaganda: “free speech”, “suppression”, etc…and WE are the ones being suppressed!!! Our views are totally suppressed, the 85% of Americans who want a public option!
OUR views are suppressed by the coroprate Tokyo Rose media that they own!
…and the same ones who want us to think it’s “the liberal media”. We’re talking about Tokyo Rose, propaganda, Edward Bernays, etc…part of the SHAM is to get us to think the media is “liberal”…WHO are the “liberals” who own this media? What are these “liberals” name? GE?????
Rush Limbaugh?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/united_health_group.pdf
Ho, ho, ho.
That should move things in the direction Nader suggested, in terms of hearings, etc.
Follow the money.
Instead of Baucus, Ross, Grassley; show me the money.
The story is all over the internet. Just Google = waxman stupak letter health insurers
Konstantin
I don’t have a link that expresses it solely on the healthcare thing, but the problem isn’t really about prices. It’s about our monetary “system”… the “fractional reserve system”… and this 47-minute video does a very good job of explaining it…
Check out this short clip from the Courage Campaign.
The entire thing is a scam — made to look like reform while actually serving the Neocon interests, like everything else Obusha does. The Bush third term continues unchecked. It was indeed a brilliant stratgem from the Neocons and the Bilderbergers. They outsmarted the entire world with their phony ‘change’ candidate. With smart people like now Greg Palast calling bullshit on the president’s scams yet still thinking Obama is basically a good person (?), the question is, how long until people really register this simple fact: We’ve Been Had?
This is why the right is working so hard against Obama — because they have to do so to make the left defend him. Otherwise the left will catch on whose team Obama is really playing for. As of now, the majority is emasculated because they still believe his ‘change’ bullshit. But I see the truth, and it is grisly and sick indeed. I can’t even listen to Air America anymore because their hosts still Don’t Get It. After 8 years of Bush, how can they not? because we don’t want to believe they fooled us AGAIN. Well, guess what. They did.
Now what are we going to DO about it?
Here is a link to an article from LEF Magazine that explains how to lower the costs of many medications.
The Generic Drug Rip Off
Some quotes from the article:
“The culprit behind overpriced generic drugs is an archaic regulatory environment that functions to protect pharmaceutical financial interests, forcing consumers to pay artificially inflated prices for their generic medications.”
“A side benefit to lower-priced generic drugs is that it will force pharmaceutical companies to bring out life-saving medications faster, since almost-as-good generics will cost virtually nothing.”
“Take the drug finasteride (Proscar®) for example. It came off patent in 2006, but at the end of 2008, chain pharmacies were charging about $90 for 30 tablets (a one-month supply).
…
We checked on the cost of buying finasteride and making it into tablets. The free market price for 30 tablets is only $10.25, which includes an independent assay of the ingredient quality, potency, and tablet dissolution—and a reasonable profit margin.”
Some examples of prices from the chart in the article:
Brand Name: Zocor®
Generic Name: Simvastatin 20 mg
Average Price at Chain Drugstores: $ 27.99
Life Extension Pharmacyâ„¢ Price: $ 7.08
Free Market Price: $ 3.20
Brand Name: Depakote®
Generic Name: Divalproex 500 mg
Average Price at Chain Drugstores: $ 129.99
Life Extension Pharmacyâ„¢ Price: $ 53
Free Market Price: $ 9.59
“The chart on this page reveals the shocking numbers. Compared with what chain pharmacies are charging today, the free market prices are an astounding 51% to 94% lower!”
Worth reading.
I love Glenn Greenwald….
The poll numbers reflecting a significant gap between reality and perception based upon whom a viewer relies upon for “news,” Floridiot, is predictable and consistent with past polling.
As revealed by Norman Solomon in War Made Easy A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland concerning people who erroneously believed either that we invaded Iraq because of WMD or links to al Qaeda revealed not only that 80% of Fox News viewers held at least one of these misperceptions but that viewers of other major networks were not far behind—the number was 71% at CBS, 61% at ABC, 55% each at CNN and NBC as compared to only 23% at PBS. “The study found a correlation between being misinformed and being supportive of the war.â€
A later released 2004 PIPA study revealed that 75% of those who believed both the WMD and al Qaeda links canards favored Bush’s re-election.
These misperceptions were the product of a carefully orchestrated campaign of perception management.
In his documentary Weapons of Mass Deception Danny Schechter cites a F.A.I.R. study which covered 1,617 on-air sources during the period 3/20/03 to 4/9/03 in which 71% were found to be pro-war and a scant 3% were anti-war.
The pro-war on-air “experts†did not appear out of the woodwork. They consisted of retired officers who had acted as propaganda conduits for the Pentagon and the Bush administration, which funneled to them the disinformation they were seeking to convey to the American people.
While much had been made of a Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll released on February 28, 2006, which contained the number 72, representing the percentage of troops serving in Iraq who felt the U.S. should withdraw within a year, the telling statistic was the number 85 — the percentage of troops serving in Iraq who, at that late date, still believed the U.S. mission was intended “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks†— a misperception that should surprise no one given the top-down organization of the military; the fact that on Sept. 27, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly stated that there was “bulletproof†evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and that, according to Steve Tatham, who had headed the British Royal Navy’s Media Operation in Iraq from November 2002 to April 2003, “the only TV station that was broadcasting continuously into military accommodations, the eating areas, the living spaces, even on the ships, was Fox News.”
By the way, it is interesting that when pundits question how we could pay for a government-run, single-payer health plan, you never hear anyone mentioning that if we just reduced by ten percent what we spend on what should more aptly be described as the War Department, if we ended the folly of Iraq & Afghanistan, there would be ample funds,
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